Bokeh

Bokeh is a term used in photography, which is taken from the Japanese word “boke” meaning “blur” or “haze” or “boke-aji” meaning “blur quality”.

Bokeh is the out of focus areas in a photographic image or film that is very pleasing to the eye. It is impossible to achieve this aesthetic beauty of Bokeh in a photographic image with the human eye due to the excellent depth of field (more on depth of field later). Bokeh is the quality of the blur, not just simply the blur. Blur could occur due to motion blur, but it’s not that type of blur Bokeh refers to in an image. Bokeh is achieved when the lens produces a certain result from out of focus points of light.

Let me show you what Bokeh is:

See those colored dots in the background. These are produced by the lens as the points of light which are reflected from the sparkling colored ornaments in the background are out of focus. If you were to see this with your human eyes, you would only see the ornaments as they were, in sharp focus.

These are the ornaments which are shown in the background of the first photograph shown above. The out of focus light points have a certain eye appeal which your eye cannot see without the use of the camera lens. If you were to see this same scene in person, you would only see every part of the front and back ornaments in its sharp focused state because the lens has the ability to create this effect our eyes cannot.

The creative possibilities in achieving bokeh (or quality blur) contained in an image are many, and can be done with certain software after the photograph was taken. This photo contains a candle decorating a table at a wedding. The lights produced a nice bokeh, but the software made it even more interesting as the points of lights were changed from circles to heart shapes. This is a really great effect for weddings or other special events. This software can also produce other shapes such as diamonds, triangles, ect, which can produce really interesting photos depending on what you want to achieve.

I want to be a beautiful ‘bokeh’. I want to be that blurred background that is pleasing to see in the picture of my life, while the sharpest image and most important part, God, is able to be clearly seen, in sharp focus. Though we cannot truly capture or even understand or imagine the glory of God this side of heaven, my point is, I want to be the beautiful background pointing to the Most High God. I don’t desire to live for myself alone, but I exist to bring glory to God. I fall short, yes, but I am a work in progress. But I will always strive to be more and more a better reflection of the one and only mediator between God and man – Jesus Christ.